Mirror Dreams
by TallysGreatestFan
Summary: In a surreal, dark dream Delenn has to hand herself over to her past and an sad truth. And her former attache and best friend appears in it too


**Mirror Dreams**

Music: ,,Heavy In Your Arms" – Florence + The Machine

 _And yet I feel, as though related,_

 _Myself spellbound by your thrills,_

 _And love must needs unite with fear._

 _Yes; were you, O phantom, to step_

 _From glass's circle to the ground,_

 _But gently shiver would I, and_

 _Methinks – weep I would for you!_

(,,The Mirror Image" – Annette von Droste-Hülshoff)

The shy, young woman stood behind a grey curtain. It extended trough the whole room, and looked rather like light that draw shapes into dust-filled air, like the light at the hall of the Grey Concil. The woman stared down and crossed her hands before her body.

,,You can look up.", said Delenn.

The woman obviously had to bring herself to do it. Then she meet Delenns look, and her eyes flipped away already. She breathed out nervously and doing so she opened her mouth in this specific way she only knew from herself. This was her. She wore the white robe from her time as acolyte, and her face was framed by her bone crest, not by dark hair to. She wasn't this almost deviate being that did not belong to any species really.

Her former self headed in her way, and smiled shyly. As its look meet her it fluttered down instantly, as if it would pollute her to look at something so other-worldly. Or such a perversity.

She felt somebody's presence beside her. Her best friend, her former attaché stood directly in front of her former self behind the curtain. He surveyed her, and the woman behind the curtain surveyed him. Then he recognized her, and his blue eyes got wide. She, how she was, opened her eyes wide too. She made the same movements like he did, as if this curtain would be a mirror. He watched the woman behind the mirror startled. For a moment he seemed so curious and innocent, just like at his first year as her aide. Yet then he turned around, and the expression of his eyes was just as broken as always. Just why had she pulled this poor, innocent boy into darkness with her? He did not deserve this.

He turned around towards her, and his mirror image did the same movement, just in the opposite direction. His narrow lips made a retiring smile, and he almost seemed happy again. Until she perceived the desperation behind all.

,,He don't knows her, does he?", he said and pointed at his mirror image behind the curtain.

,,No"

,,You never introduced her to him."

,,And he should never get to know her. Under no circumstances"

He nodded, and his smile seemed sad now. She knew what he thought but could not say because of respect towards her. How could it be, that her mate did not know her? But understanding was not required. And so he kept silent.

,,I know her.", he said finally, and looked at her like back then after the transformation, as he was the only one left who stand by her. _I will always be by your side._ His closeness was reassuring, somehow comforting.

,,Mayan knew her, Neroon knew her, Jeff and the former Grey Concil too. But you are the only person left."

He nodded, and raised his arm comforting. Yet shortly before he touched her, he let drop his hand, because he respected her to much to touch her for no reason. They stood so close that their robes brushed.

,,He wouldn't understand this.", he said, and she just nodded.

,,Thank you", she placed her hand on his upper arm. His smile twiched, and his pleasure about even this tiny touch was visible only for a moment, then he had banished the expression.

,,I'm sorry, Lennier."

He looked down and seemed so infinitely lost again.

She raised her hand, traced the form of his right cheekbone, than the left, and then a straight line from his throat to his chin. He just looked at her, his glimpse slightly dreamy and somehow far away. How devoted this narrow lips still were…

She bend forward and kissed him. Their lips met soft and hesitantly first, then she pressed her mouth harder on his, and he leaned his head back and gave himself fully to her. His body was slightly tense and yet fully devoted, he snuggled up to her as she pulled him closer. His trembling fingers touched her neck, the other hand drove carefully trough one of her wisps. She marveled about how delicate and soft his long fingers still felt, despite everything he had gone trough.

She hold him firmly on his back, let her fingers slide up over his neck eventually. She felt the bumps of his spine and the thin, firm muscles beneath his skin, and then the grooves of bone. He shuddered.

How foreign this became to her. How long hadn't she been with one of her species? How long were the years with her Minbari lovers ago?

The warm grooves of his crest felt so alien and unfamiliar. Even his scent seemed strange to her, cool and dry like the needle forests near her hometown or maybe an old library, mixed with a under sheet of warm wax, not the spicily, sourly scent of a human. How could it be that someone of her own species seemed so alien to her?

Yet he was different from her past mates too, even Accolon, slender and so passive. His body was soft, with thin muscles that cringed under each touch. Before every even so small reaction he hesitate shortly, his movements were incredible careful and tender, but not as if he would believe she was fragile, no, he would never. He knew _her_ after all. His fingers touched her neck as if he would pray.

Nevertheless he moved controlled and lithe, his body was wiry from sparring. She knew how tough he could be, if he had to. Still he seemed so fragile to her, so frail.

It did not feel like really kissing somebody, it was far more intimate and deeper and lesser physical. Rather as if they would be only a single being, and would now separate slowly. For a moment everything seemed fine, she did not saw the woman behind the curtain, not the darkness, not the emptiness around her.

She did not know where the knife came from. It was her ritual knife, cold and crystalline and familiar, with the sign of the Tenth Fane of Eleya on its hilt. She rammed it deep into his chest, between his ribs trough, till its beam into his flesh.

He stumbled a step back, stared at her. His blue eyes were wide but still so terrible full of love. It made her angry. How could he still love her? How could he still be so devoted to her if she just had trusted the knife into his chest?

He grasped for her hand, and for a moment she hold him, then his grip escaped her. Behind the curtain the woman in the white robe grasped into emptiness, fell too, as nobody could help her. Somehow she managed to still stand faltering. Her blood drew red spots on her robe. Blood dripped out of his mouth and over his chin, poured trough his fingers and speckled the ground. Blood was on her hands.

,,I know it.", he cried. How often had he cried because of her? But now it would be over at least, he would finally didn't have to suffer anymore, and maybe he would be happier in his next live as at this. The though hurt, hurt so incredible much, as if all the blood was hers. ,,But for what could I hope other than this? There is no greater honor than giving ones live for a great soul. Even if… I rather had liked to give it without stain your honor so much."

She didn't try to help him, she just stood there, watched how his eyes searched hers, distorted with pain, broken, with the silent wish to not be left alone. Und so she did not let go his eyebeam. ,,Delenn…" Until it was just an empty staring anymore and her companion, closest friend, _soul mate_ was just an mass of carbon atoms and organic molecules.

,,You had to do it.", said the young woman. Her lips were stained with blood, too, but her voice sounded serene and certain.

Only now she saw that two sculls laid behind the certain. One was human, Ganya Ivanov was written over its forehead. The other was Minbari, and the letters blurred underneath her look, shaped now words constantly. Venkat of Mir, her father. The names of Lenniers family. The names of all the fallen, whose names she had gotten once a week. Neroon.

She stared at the blood on her hands shocked. To her poor best friend, lying lifelessly on his back, in front of her on the ground. It seemed far to much blood for such a small stab, and the wound looked more like a plasma gun shoot. Another injury extended over his head, an open fracture.

,,No!", she cried, ,,I can't live. I can't live without you.", she did not know if she was speaking to Lennier or to his mirror image or to both, ,,I can't… without you… I can't…"

,,You had to do it.", said the woman behind the mirror. She laid there lifelessly, yet her lips still moved, ,,Either he, or you."

She awoke with tear soaked face. Still half caught into the horror of the dream she touched her own head, highly relived to still feel her bone crest between all this hair.

Her heart hurt as if she had lost a part of herself, and she couldn't stop crying. She still saw the face of her poor, loyal, so brave best friend before her inner eye. His desperation. The lostness in his eyes. And she became aware of the emptiness in her heart again, where he should be, the emptiness she already did not feel anymore because it was ever-present, because she became so accustomed to it, just how it always was for all the friends, people she had loved, who she had lost.

She turned out and knew that she could not talk to anyone about it. Susan was away, Mila Shar was on her home planet, since the civil war Mayan hated her… And her… Lennier was right, he would not understand it. She walked to the cyberport and recorded a message for her old friend Lennan, because she had not done this for far to long. Then she ordered a bodyguard and got for a walk at the streets of Tuzandor, viewed the blue-leafed trees and crystalline buildings and smelled the cold wind of her homeland.

A/N: Oh dear, I just hope this dream really seems as tragic, confusing and deep as the idea seemed to me, and not just completely woozy.

Damn, after what canon did to them they both would have deserved a positive, happy story. This here accrued as I thought about my own dreams, and edited some of them so that they could fit into my stories – this one is actually made-up. As much as I adore their friendship and love, there are indeed parts of it to that are pretty destructive and that the must solve before it could ever be a really healthy relationship, and I somehow had to write about this darkest parts of this pairing. And that I show the Sheridan romance from a not so corny point of view in order to make it realistic and believable to myself (because my damn brain is just to canon fixed even when I dislike this romance and found it totally unbelievable and out of charcter) really shouldn't be a secret anymore.

The story plays some years after ,,Objects at Rest" and maybe Delenn handles with this dream the death of her best friend at the explosion of the psi corps headquarter. Although I still hope that this part was just symbolic and he is still alive, and that they can have a happy end after Captain American Cliché Hero's death. Neither Lennier nor Delenn did deserve the end that canon gave to them in my opinion.


End file.
